Had he admitted that it really was his wife's persistency, overbearing his better judgment, which had settled the matter, he might have been tempted to blame her. But even to himself he did not admit this. Rather than confess that he had been managed by a woman, he preferred to look upon the mistake as entirely his own. Moreover, he was too devoted a husband to condemn openly any fault in his wife. She was, of course, a woman, and as such he would have counted it _infra dig._ on his part to have been controlled by her; but she was also in his eyes the fairest and most charming woman that ever had lived; and the one thing on earth before which the Colonel's courage failed was the sight of tears in his Harriette's large grey eyes. That they should return home, as at first proposed, by the end of a fortnight, unless they were willing to leave the boy behind, was impossible; and neither of them would for a moment contemplate that idea. No matter how well Roy might get on, he would be a prisoner beyond the fortnight. Small-pox is a disease which "gangs its ain gait," and makes haste for no man's convenience. Even after actual recovery, there would still be need for quarantine. Had Roy remained at home, he would probably have sickened at the same date, if, as was supposed, he had taken the infection from one of his schoolfellows. But then he would have been safe in England, and his parents could any day have returned to him. Now he seemed likely to keep them abroad, at a time when war-clouds hovered unpleasantly near. When Roy first fell ill, the doctor who was hastily called in at once pronounced him to be sickening for that fell disease, which held the world in a thraldom of terror. Not without good reason. It was reckoned that in those days nearly half a million of people died in Europe every year of small-pox; about forty-five millions being swept away in a century; while tens of thousands were rendered hideous for life, and large numbers were hopelessly blinded. We, who know small-pox mainly in the very modified form which sometimes occurs in vaccinated people, can scarcely even imagine what the ravages of the disease were in those years of its fullest and most unchecked sway. Mrs. Baron was a fond and tender mother; yet when first that dread word left the doctor's lips, even she fled in horror from the sick room, agonised, not only at the thought of losing her child, but of parting also with her own attractive looks. From infancy she had been used to admiration; and she knew only too well to what a mere mockery of the human face many a lovelier countenance than hers was reduced. Though a most winning woman, she was hardly of a strong nature; and even her mother-love failed for the moment under that fearful test. The Colonel, kind but helpless, was left alone by his boy's bedside.